Google has unveiled the next step in its plans to push into the market for online financial services with a price comparison site for mortgages and bank accounts.
The search engine first dipped a toe into the market with a mortgage price comparison tool back in 2009. It has since launched products that offer surfers an …

well.....

Simples?

Never mind GoCompare...

...get rid of that darned annoying CGI meerkat.

In fact, get rid of all the TV ads for comparison websites, since unless you've been living on Mars you won't get confused by meerkats and will know how to compare prices without visiting a physical supermarket. Never mind the biggest of those is also offering its own comparison site, so I expect the others will soon be offering "me too!" services.

But if Google's planning its own comparison site, then presumably it won't be long before Bing gets in on the act...

So,

by your system you could, say, enter onto a site that you require insurance for your Ford Mondeo 2.0 that you park overnight at 29 Acacia Rd, and that you have 3 years no-claims etc; and then insurance companies could bid to provide you with such insurance?

@fridaynightsmoke

Not really - What you get is their price for pretty much a fixed product - I was looking for some element of bidding against each other in the mix and a shift in emphasis from supply push to demand pull.

Maybe car insurance isn't the best example because it is one of the more transparent financial products but one of the reasons why the financial services industry was allowed to blow up the world was that very few people understood the products they were buying.

BeatThatQuote.com

They bought UK price comparison site BeatThatQuote.com* recently, and then immediately penalised it from the search engine results for spamming. I kind of suspect that it wasn't really worth the £38m they shelled out for it..

Hmmm

I wonder...

As I've yet to get a quote from ANY price comparison site that was less than 100 quid MORE than the quote I obtain directly by my self, I wonder how long it is before google in the states gets its backside sued by some irate American who has just found themselves paying over the odds for insurance/mortgage/credit card?

Personally I'm tempted to take the ASA to court for allowing the blatant and misleading lies from these sites on British TV.